Gelato Messina dessert degustations head to Melbourne

If you find it hard to stick to one scoop at Gelato Messina's Melbourne stores - good news. The cult gelati brand is bringing its dessert degustations to Windsor for one week only.

The inventive menu is usually served at Messina Creative Department in Sydney's Darlinghurst, but from August 23-27 it will be on offer at the rear of the store on Chapel Street.

The team behind the Elvis The Fat Years, Pavlova and Robert Brownie Jr gelato flavours started offering this experimental fine-dining experience in April, with the opening of Sydney's Messina Creative Department. The launch menu included frozen wonders such as white-chocolate sake gelato in a mannitol egg shell, designed to be cracked open with a mini hammer, as well as goat's milk sherbet adorned with licorice, lemon myrtle tuiles and candy-like slices of dehydrated then rehydrated strawberries.

There were also left-field treats, such as purple basil and beetroot granita and a garlic and vanilla gelato, tomato and bergamot gel confit that busted all 'could this be good?' suspicions by actually proving to be great.

Messina's seven-course dessert degustation ($130 per person) has been endorsed by Michelin-starred chef Zaiyu Hasegawa of Den in Tokyo, who won the One To Watch Award at the recent World's 50 Best Restaurants awards (famous for its whimsical dishes, such as dessert plated on a shovel).

Melbourne's upcoming Messina Creative Department menu is a surprise - but here's a sense of what to expect. Sydney's current menu includes lemongrass gelato with Michel Cluizel 99 per cent dark chocolate, candied preserved lemon, and thyme leaves straight from the Messina veggie patch, paired with caramelised malt and Jersey milk spiked with white miso paste (All the desserts are matched with just-as-imaginative drinks, by the way).

To be the first in Melbourne to try the experience you'll need to be quick, as the table only seats eight, with only two sittings per night.

171 Chapel Street, Windsor. Bookings: gelatomessina.com/au/creativedepartmentmelbourne